Marino Cruz Castellanos, known as Marino Castellanos and billed as La Voz de Seda, is a Dominican bachata singer and songwriter. He came to recording late and after a long stretch of manual work, and he writes the material he records.

Caobete

He was born in 1958 in Caobete, a rural settlement between Las Guáranas and Pimentel in the province of Duarte. He worked from the age of seven, planting rice alongside his father and clearing land by the day for three pesos fifty. He came from a family of farmers and was the one who did not stay on the land.

The music he sang while working was other people’s. He learned the repertoire of Luis Segura and Leonardo Paniagua in the fields, and the people around him began asking him to sing.

Police and night watch

He entered the police academy at San Cristóbal, where a cadet who heard him sing excused him from cleaning duty in exchange for singing while the others worked. He served two years and resigned. For roughly four years afterwards he worked as a security guard, first for a firm that hired former police, then on twelve-hour residential shifts, and finally at a mining company, earning a hundred and fifteen pesos a fortnight.

The patron-saint festival

On one of his rare days off a guitarist friend took him to the patron-saint festival at Los Cacaos, in Hatillo. He asked to sing one song, and the band agreed. He chose a bachata, which the lead guitarist warned him was the wrong choice for that kind of event, and sang No Me Celes Tanto. The audience called him the double of Luis Segura and demanded two more.

The notebook

One of the guitarists told him to write his own songs and take them to Radhamés Aracena, who ran Radio Guarachita and its label. He bought a notebook and a pencil and wrote through his night shifts until he had twelve songs, recorded them on a cassette with his guitarist friend, and took it to Santo Domingo.

Aracena signed him on the spot. The first production, No Me Hagas Sufrir Tanto, named for the first song he ever wrote, was released in 1984.

The long climb

He formed his own group in 1986, and the recognition came slowly. The turn arrived three decades into the career, when a run of singles released in 2014 reached audiences abroad: Voy a Romper la Cama en Dos, La Lloradera and above all Eso Da Pa’ To, the record his name is now attached to. He has since toured the Caribbean and the United States.